Contents

Out of the Box

By default Joomla! 1.5 provides the ability to use LDAP as an option for authentication within Joomla!. For most purposes this should suffice. However this extension does not provide all of the features that the JAuthTools LDAP SSI bot does for Joomla! 1.0 such as group mapping.

If you want your Joomla! instance to authenticate across to an LDAP directory (MSAD/Microsoft Active Directory, eDirectory, etc) then all you need to do is configure this plugin. If you are having issues configuring the plugin (especially for MSAD) then you might wish to look at the JDiagnostic tool (http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/pasamioprojects/frs) which will give you a wizard to configure MSAD based authentication.

Getting Started

Joomla! 1.5 has some new features that make installing the JAuthTools services in 1.5 different to the 1.0 method. This page is currently a draft.

The easiest way to get started is to install the Advanced Tools for 1.5 extension. This provides your Joomla! 1.5 site with the ability to install both packages and libraries, which makes your life easier along the line. Before you install Advanced Tools however, you need to ensure that the /libraries/joomla/installer/adapters folder is writeable by Joomla! so that the installer can put files there, in addition to the normal locations for files. Once you've done that, you can use the URL based installer to install the package straight off JoomlaCode or download and install the package by upload. At the time of writing the latest version of Advanced Tools was 1.5.2, you can check for updates at Pasamio's Projects FRS Site or directly download from the following: http://joomlacode.org/gf/download/frsrelease/18180/79341/com_advancedtools.tgz

Once the Advanced Tools has installed successfully (Screenshot) you can continue to install the JAuthTools package. If some folders aren't writeable, the Advanced Tools installer might request that you copy files into /libraries/joomla/installer/adpaters manually. For JAuthTools you will need to ensure the 'libraries' folder is writeable as it will create a new 'jauthtools' folder there.

Libraries

In Joomla! 1.5, libraries are available via a new interface designed to make the system more manageable. In 1.0 this system did not exist which meant that typically libraries were installed with an extension or using a mambot. JAuthTools in 1.0 used the mambot method of installing new classes which meant that the LDAP library was available for all extensions when the mambot was published. The new interface exposes libraries in a way similar to Java.

Install the JAuthTools Libraries

JAuthTools has two major libraries. The first is SSO, or Single Sign On, library which is used to handle the SSO system, namely for Kerberos integration. The second is the User Source library. The user source library is aimed at providing details on a given username, such as email address. There libraries are available from the JAuthTools FRS site. The SSO system is dependent upon the User Source library, so to use SSO you will need to install the User Source library.

Increasingly JAuthTools extensions are becoming reliant on a third library, the helper library. The helper library is a dependency for the eDirLDAP SSO plugin, the LDAP User Source plugin as well as the Advanced LDAP and Advanced GMail authentication plugins.

All three of these libraries are available individually or in a pack called "pkg_jauthtools_core.tgz" for ease of installation.

The other two libraries available from JAuthTools are the Token Login library and the OpenID library. Both of these are distributed on their own as well as within their own packages (OpenID and Token Login respectively).

Packages

JAuthTools is comprised of a number of packages in addition to the Core JAuthTools packages

SSO

The SSO system consists of a system plugin that bootstraps the SSO plugins. This package contains the SSO Manager Component, the SSO Module and the System SSO plugin.

SSO Plugins

SSO is a new type of plugin created for the system and there are a few SSO plugins available by default. This means that SSO plugins can be controlled using the normal plugin manager interface. Additionally since 1.5.4, there is a SSO manager and SSO module.

User Sources

The User Sources system consists of three major plugins: the Sync System plugin and the LDAP and Session user source plugins. The sync plugin is designed to ensure a user is set to the appropriate group and the LDAP user source is designed to provide user information.

Extras

There are two authentication plugins, Advanced GMail and Advanced LDAP, that are distributed with JAuthTools. There is also a LDAP user plugin that is available and the context login module. This package is dependent upon the helper library (part of the Core package).

OpenID

JAuthTools ships one of its own OpenID plugins. It was contributed by Ian MacLennan and hasn't undergone extensive testing yet. We're releasing OpenID in 1.5.4 as a beta release looking towards doing some more work.

Token Login

Token Login is a new feature for 1.5.4 that allows you to easily integrating token logins into your Joomla! site. It ships with a token library for issuing tokens, a component that handles token issuing as well as editing and revocation and a token login SSO plugin that can be used to log the user in.